In C1 chemistry, following methane chemistry, synthesis gas chemistry and methanol chemistry, methyl formate has been developed as a new starting material of C1 chemicals and constitutional unit gradually, because it can be economically and effective produced in large scale, and it can be used in making numerous downstream products, etc. Using methyl formate as a starting material, numerous chemical products of C1 chemistry can be prepared, such as formic acid, acetic acid, glycol, methyl propionate, methyl acrylate, methyl glycolate, N-formylmorpholine, N-methylformamide, N,N-dimethyl formamide and the like.
In the present technology for preparing methyl formate, there are defects including high impurity sensitivity, strict requirement for the purity of raw materials, complex production process, high energy consumption, high investment, hard use of by-byproducts. In view of the above reasons, the yield of single production equipment is generally less than 0.1 million tons each year, making it hard to form scale effect. It will bring important economic vale if methyl formate can be produce under mild conditions by a simple process, using methanol and formaldehyde which are cheap and available bulks chemicals.